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The oil tankers that razed downtown Lac-Mégantic came with a cargo manifest.

That document tells us that the haul of 72 tankers came from the Bakken oilfields in North Dakota, where they were loaded with a total of 7.2 million litres of crude. The oil passed through Toronto, Montreal and was destined for the Irving refinery in Saint John, N.B.

But what if the manifest was wrong about the contents?

It’s a question investigators from the Transportation Safety Board raised Thursday as the agency prepared to leave Lac-Mégantic to pursue its investigation at a lab in Ottawa. Lead investigator Donald Ross said it’s unclear if crude oil could have created a blast strong enough to level an entire city centre.

“We want to make sure that the dangerous goods that were involved here, that they were properly described, that they were properly packaged in the right tank cars — and we’re going to check into all those things.”

“We’ll be testing the chemicals we recovered and scraped from the tankers to see if they match what was on the manifest,” Ross told The Gazette. “We’ve seen video on social media, we’ve interviewed the firefighters who were first on the scene. ... I’ve been in the railroad business for 40 years and a fire that size, it’s serious, it’s devastating.”

Ross refused to speculate any further on the matter but his statement raises questions about exactly how hazardous cargo shipped into Canada is inspected and classified.

The runaway train’s journey into the heart of Lac-Mégantic began in the plains of Bakken in North Dakota, where oil production has increased tenfold since 2011. Within the petroleum industry, the Bakken fields have a reputation for producing oil rich with such chemicals as hydrogen sulphate and benzene — a highly reactive compound used to manufacture napalm and other explosives. In fact, Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge has complained numerous times to U.S. regulators that Bakken’s crude oil is volatile.

The crude loaded into the 72 cars was labelled a Class 3 flammable liquid on the cargo’s manifest sheet. That information would have been sent to the Canada Border Services Agency in an electronic file before the train arrived. Other data in that file includes the cargo’s weight, its contents and the serial number of the inspection seals placed on every car.

The seals are issued not by a federal inspector, but rather by an employee of the railroad company tasked with overseeing the load. As long as the paperwork is in order, there’s little incentive for the CBSA to verify if the contents listed on the train’s logbook match what’s actually inside each tanker.

One of the only situations that would trigger an automatic inspection is if any of the seals are broken, according to the CBSA’s internal memorandums.

“The railroads have it their own way, that’s pretty much how regulation in the industry works,” said Chris Thibedeau, vice-president of GreenLine Systems, a cargo risk assessment firm. “The guy placing the seal on the train is working for the company. He’s not independent. The only real reason the seal is in place is so that the customer knows it hasn’t been tampered with.”

The manifests CBSA receives into its Electronic Data Interchange system give a comprehensive picture of what’s coming into the country. But that information isn’t shared with Transport Canada after the freight crosses into Canada, Thibedeau said.

“It’s a problem, we’re basically blind as to what’s passing through,” he said. “And there’s a simple solution. Share the information, make it transparent.”

Representatives from the CBSA and Transport Canada were unable to offer comment to The Gazette on Thursday. However, a representative from the United States Customs and Border Protection outlined a process by which freight is evaluated south of the border.

“The CBP reviews the (manifests) and determines, in advance, whether the merchandise merits examination or release,” said CBP spokesman Mike Milne. Milne added that, as in Canada, his agency receives a digital copy of the manifest ahead of time.

Although Ross said the manifest sheet offers a clear enough idea of what kind of hazardous materials were on board the freight train during the July 6 crash, his investigators haven’t ruled out the possibility that additives may have contributed to the explosion.

“No matter what caused the explosion, there’s an opportunity to assess exactly how we evaluate what kind of goods are shipped through our communities,” Thibedeau said. “That’s perhaps what isn’t being spoken about here. The amount of shipping that comes into this country is growing exponentially and we’re not seeing more inspectors. There are hardly enough inspectors as it is. So, to me, the solution is for us to be smart about this, to be transparent and share information.”

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